Two arrests made so far as detectives track down rape suspects

HOLLYWOOD — — The DNA evidence implicating a rape suspect languished in a Hollywood police refrigerator for nearly three years.

Investigators finally submitted the DNA for testing earlier this year — one month after suspect Kareem Malcolm was implicated in another rape in Boston.

The rape kit was discovered last year during an audit of the Hollywood Police Department. The audit, ordered by new Chief Frank Fernandez, turned up 94 untested rape kits.

Detectives tagged 24 kits as priorities and submitted them to the Broward Sheriff's Office crime lab. Five months later, 13 have been tested.

A rape kit allows investigators to collect DNA from victims. Once analyzed, the evidence can be entered into state and national databases to see if it matches the DNA of known criminals.

The processed kits have resulted in the arrests of Malcolm, 42, of Boston; and Lee Donte Parrish, 38, of Lauderhill. Malcolm is also a suspect in a May 2010 sexual assault in Orlando, police said.

Fernandez noted that the backlog of rape kits was not unique to Hollywood.

"This is not a Hollywood problem, this is a national problem," Fernandez told reporters, crediting detectives for their hard work. "At the end of the day, this is about justice for these victims."

Dr. Larry Kobilinsky, professor of forensic science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, questioned why it was taking so long to process the kits.

"Seldom is a case going to be resolved in one day," he said. "But let me assure you, if this was a high-profile case, if someone important had been raped, it would have been done lickety-split."

Last year, the BSO crime lab had to analyze DNA from 1,644 cases, including 245 sexual-assault cases. So far this year, the crime lab has been asked to analyze DNA for 893 cases, including 170 rape cases.

The task of processing a rape kit is costly and time-consuming, law enforcement officials say.

It can cost up to $2,000 to analyze just one kit, says Veda Coleman-Wright, spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office.

But letting rape kits languish in a crime lab or an evidence locker can lead to the bad guy roaming free to commit more crimes, Kobilinsky said.

Coleman-Wright said one staffer at the crime lab has been assigned to handle the Hollywood rape kits — and that's going to take some time.

"It is certainly not 'CSI Miami,' where evidence is analyzed within an hour," she said of DNA analysis. "Due to the unusual circumstance regarding the 94 Hollywood cases, command staff at the crime lab felt it prudent to assign those cases to one analyst for the sake of consistency. This may have caused slightly more of a delay in analyzing the evidence than would normally be the case."

Each rape kit may have multiple items to be analyzed, Coleman-Wright said, and each item must go through at least a 10-step process and each step can take up to several days.

On Friday, Hollywood police announced that rape kits that lay untested for years had led to the arrests of Malcolm and another suspect in a 2006 case involving a 13-year-old victim.

Police say Malcolm raped a woman at gunpoint in May 2011.

Here's what happened, according to police: The woman, then 25, was walking to a friend's house about 1 a.m. A man drove up, pointed a gun at her, ordered her into the car and threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with him. He assaulted her in the car and again at an abandoned house.

A rape kit was collected the same day. But the kit was not submitted to the crime lab until Jan. 8, 2014, nearly three years later.

Hollywood police say the kit was not submitted to the crime lab right away because they could not reach the victim. At that time, the crime lab would not process the rape kit unless the victim was talking to police, Fernandez says.

Today, the victim is assisting with the case, police say.

Malcolm is now in police custody in Boston and will be extradited to Broward County in July. He faces two counts of armed sexual battery with a firearm and one count of armed kidnapping with a firearm.

Parrish, the other man captured with the help of DNA testing, preyed on a 13-year-old girl he spotted walking down the street, police say.

It was April 2006 when Parrish offered the girl a ride. After she got in the car, he drove to a field and forced her to have sex with him.

She later told police she cried and begged him to stop, saying "I'm only 13 and you're raping me." Parrish, now 38, continued with the assault, police say, then dropped the girl off at her friend's house.

The girl and her mother reported the attack eight years ago. But the victim's rape kit was not taken to the crime lab until Jan. 10, 2014.

On May 27, Hollywood police got a report back from the crime lab pointing to Parrish as a potential suspect.

Parrish was arrested June 19 and charged with sexual battery, kidnapping and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.